Obama’s Climate Trick

In a rush to end the production of inexpensive electricity from coal—a policy that would hamstring the economy—the Obama administration is ignoring the constitutional requirements for international treaties. That’s because it sees the latest international agreement on Global Warming as a way to help defend its sweeping new regulations on generating electricity, which are themselves unlawful under the Clean Air Act. The administration is daring Congress to stop its unilateral actions on treaties and its blatant disregard of existing law.

The world is rushing headlong toward an international agreement (supposedly) to fight Global Warming, to be finalized in Paris at the end of this year. Even from the perspective of environmentalists, the deal won’t do much to fight Warming. That’s because, among other reasons, it’s highly unlikely that there will be any way to enforce the agreement other than by “naming and shaming” violators.

But to the Obama administration, the upcoming deal represents a prime opportunity to do another end-run around the Constitution—to impose major restrictions on the American economy through an international agreement, while ignoring the requirement that treaties be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

That pesky Constitution and the Clean Air Act stand in the way of the administration’s so-called Clean Power Plan, the key component in its War on Coal.